A Core Belief Crushed
by Karama9
Summary: Everyone adores Chloe Bourgeois... or so she sincerely believes. When she finally discovers otherwise, Cat Noir and Ladybug attempt to nudge her towards being a better person. No shipping, but no anti shipping either... just no romance depicted. Also includes my head canon that a certain character is transgender.


**Notes:**

I wanted to get this our for pride month, because although there is a fair amount of fan work, for Ladybug and other shows, featuring same sex pairing, you don't often see much more representation in fan work than in canon for transgender people.

So this story features my head canon that one of the secondary characters in Ladybug is in fact transgender. I'll explain what gives me the impression in the end notes.

The story also features another head canon of mine, although this one will only be hinted at. See if you can spot it! Probably not. I might tell you about it in the end notes too.

Just the same, this is a story about Chloe. I don't like her much, but I do like redemption stories, so I'm opened to the idea of her becoming a better person. This is one potential first step towards that.

* * *

 **A Core Belief Crushed**

Chloe Bourgeois checked the time on her phone for what must have been the hundredth time in twenty minutes and scowled. They had been trapped in this classroom so long, prevented from leaving by Kaepora Gaebora, the giant human-owl hybrid their principal had turned into, that she would end up missing her mani-pedi appointment.

Even with Adrikins by her side and Marinette Dupain-Cheng on the other side of the room, pacing and pulling at her ears like some kind of maniac but blissfully quiet, the whole situation was unacceptable. Being trapped by an akuma was bad enough; the fact that her father would refuse to punish the akumatized person because he was protected by the Akuma Victim Forgiveness Act was bad enough; but the worst part, the insulting part, was that the Parisian duo of super heroes were not coming. She, the Mayor's own daughter and Ladybug's most prestigious fan, was being held as bait and the heroine was nowhere to be found.

She groaned in frustration. "Where are those useless Ladybug and Cat Noir?" She demanded out loud, glaring at nobody in particular.

Adrien inexplicably winced before putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure Ladybug is on the way," he said with his trademarked gentle smile.

It nearly mollified her.

"He's right, Chloe," Sabrina stammered encouragingly. "She'd never abandon us. Especially you!"

"She better not!" Chloe snapped. She turned her glare towards the window, through which Ladybug was still failing to come crashing through, and spotted a downright miraculous distraction: Nathanael was sitting by the window and doodling.

She smirked and sauntered over. This was perfect: she'd grab whatever version of Marinette the poor lovestruck idiot was drawing this time, make a joke, and not only would it be fun but everyone would thank her for lightening up the mood.

Their resident artist was so absorbed that he never noticed her until her hand slapped down on his page. Chloe grinned as his eyes widened in horror, and she yanked the sheet away from him. It was another comic, so more likely than not, Nat had drawn himself as some super hero again, rescuing damsel in distress Dupain-Cheng. She skimmed the page to confirm, ready to deliver her witty remark about how rescuing that girl was a waste of super powers even when those powers didn't actually exist.

The clever joke died in her throat as her eyes widened. Both Nathanael and Marinette were drawn as heroes this time, and they were fighting a blond supervillain that was unmistakably her self. She dropped the sheet as though it burnt her hands and looked at Nathan in shock.

"You drew ME as the villain?" she asked angrily.

Nathan's face was nearly as red as his hair. He shook his head without meeting her eyes.

Chloe barked a laugh and willed her frown away. Anger was an acceptable reaction when faced with an insult, but amusement was better: it established that the insult and whoever was guilty of it were beneath her. "That's just stupid; I'm the opposite of a villain! And besides, everyone adores me."

Adrien, who had materialized next to her, put his hand on her shoulder again, but this time, there was an ever so slight pull to the gesture. "Forget it Chloe," he said. "Come on…"

She shook him off. "Almost done, Adrikins," she said in as pleasant a voice as she could manage. She shouldn't be angry. She should be amused. This was FUNNY because it was SO ridiculous.

Adrien sighed and slumped. She ignored him and focused on Nathanael, who seemed to have recovered a little and had stowed the offending comic away. He was avoiding her eyes.

"I'm NOT a villain," she repeated, her voice far less composed than she would have liked it. Amused. Be amused at the inconsequential people and their nonsensical little jokes. Nat's opinion didn't even matter. "Why would you draw that? Ivan threw me from the top of the Eiffel tower," she added, gesticulating at all their classmates. Forget amusement: anger was still acceptable. "Max and Alix zapped a bunch of people for energy, including ME, Alya wanted to reveal her precious Ladybug's identity live, Juleka forced me, and everyone else, to wear that horrible outfit and makeup, Rose made me stink in front of Prince Ali, and I'm the villain?" She was aware that her voice had risen as she talked and that she was now nearly yelling, but she was past the point of caring. "You just don't like me because I'm the Mayor's daughter and you're jealous! That's it, isn't it?"

"Let it go, Chloe," Marinette called out from the other side of the room. "We don't need this right now!"

"You kiddin'?" Alya asked with a laugh. "Let her humiliate herself if she wants to, it could be fun to watch. We're with you Nat!" she added louder, cupping her hand around her mouth in a makeshift amplifier and raising her fist in the air.

Chloe dismissed the two of them from her mind and focused her attention on Nathan again. "You of all people," she said venomously. "And here I am ALWAYS being nice and acting like you're a boy!"

There were a few audible gasps. Thanks in no small part to Alya, everyone was watching them by now, even Kaepora Gaebora, so everyone had heard. It's not that it was news to anyone – Nathanael had been Amélie until halfway through the fifth grade and so, pretty much the whole school knew he had been assigned female at birth. The gasps, Chloe knew, were because it wasn't too often that anyone bothered to remind him that he owed them at least a bit of gratitude.

Nathanael, for his part, was staring at his desk. He opened his mouth, but another voice cut in from behind Chloe.

"Logically, Chloe, pointing out that you act as though a particular statement is true actually means that you believe that same statement to be false."

Chloe turned to stare Max down. She had no idea whatever he had just said actually meant, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't like it if she did.

"Forget it Max," came Nathanael's voice. "It's okay."

Chloe dismissed Max and his undecipherable babbling from her mind and turned back to Nat. After all, she knew for sure that he had definitely insulted her, and badly. Chances were her words had knocked some sense back into him and he was ready to apologize.

Nathan was looking straight back at her, and, astonishingly, FROWNING. It wasn't particularly fierce, but it was most certainly not apologetic.

"You don't get to be angry right now, Nathanael Kurtzberg," she said with a snarl. "YOU just called ME a bad person through your art! You owe me an…"

"I drew you as the villain because you're always mean to everyone," he cut her off. He took a deep breath. "You're the reason I got akumatized. Apparently, I FORCED Marinette to go on a date with me, because of YOU. It's got nothing to do with my gender."

"You got Rose akumatized too," Juleka muttered from a few steps away.

"And Juleka," Rose added. "You and Sabrina."

"And me," Alya pointed out.

"Mylene, too," Ivan rumbled.

"And Kim," Max joined in.

Mylene nodded timidly. Kim fidgeted.

"Even him," Nino said, pointing his thumb at Kaepora Gaebora, who had actually given up watching the door to make sure nobody escaped in favour of watching the scene. "And seriously Chloe, you think Nat owes you? Like… you figure people owe you whenever you're not the absolute worst or something? And that it also makes you a nice person?"

"Yeah," Alix piped in. "There's kind of a lot of room between total monster and decent human being, ya know?"

Chloe was shaking her head in disbelief. She was about to come up with a comeback to simultaneously prove them all wrong and humiliate them – really, she was - when Ladybug and Cat Noir FINALLY kicked the door in, irritatingly not even giving her the satisfaction of coming in through the window like she had envisioned.

* * *

Ladybug and Cat Noir did come through Chloe's bedroom window later that evening. Chloe glared at them, obviously still angry over the day's events. Marinette felt the tension lift from her shoulders, replaced with the familiar annoyance Chloe never failed to elicit: the blond brat was still looking like herself and was not on an actual rampage.

"Hawkmoth one, Francoise-Dupont two," Cat Noir joked.

The light tone failed to hide that he was just as relieved as Ladybug. They had just checked on Nat, and although saying he was fine might have been pushing it a little bit considering he had been drawing a comic where bee themed villains with blond ponytails were getting fumigated, the artistic vengeance had obviously served its purpose: he had been in fairly good spirits and in no danger of getting akumatized.

Chloe being fine as well was icing on the cake. To Marinette, it felt like a victory of her class over Hawkmoth… just like Cat had said. It almost made up for the fact she was having to be in Chloe's presence again.

"Yep!" she said cheerfully in answer to Cat Noir. She winked at him. " _Fuming_ a bit, but no akuma."

He snorted, but any reply he might have come up with was interrupted by Chloe.

"What do YOU want?" she asked. "Look, I don't know WHY Mr. Damocles got all mad like that. Everyone automatically blames me whenever someone gets akumatized anywhere near me! Seriously, like it's my fault Kim had a crush on me? What was I supposed to do, go with it even if I didn't want to?"

Ladybug blinked, thrown off track. As surprising as it was, Chloe kind of had a point on that one. But then, Kim might not have reacted as badly had he not been publicly humiliated and that was one, possibly maybe unavoidable akumatized victim out of Chloe's record setting tally.

Cat Noir cleared his throat. "We heard about what happened today," he said. "We thought we should check on you."

Chloe tackled Ladybug in a hug, her frown evaporating. "I'm so glad SOMEONE understands!" she sobbed. "They treated me like… like…"

"They were being honest, Chloe," Ladybug cut her off, disengaging herself from the hug. She sighed, her forehead in her hand. "Look, here's what I heard. You were about to make fun of one your classmates, the one that turned into Evillustrator. Nathan, right?"

"I was just going to tease him to break the tension," Chloe corrected. "He's always drawing Marinette Dupain-Cheng, he's madly in love with her, and I was going to rib him a bit. Nothing mean. Sheesh."

"Right. Okay, let's go with that, it's not the issue anyway," Ladybug said.

"You got upset because he drew you as a villain. Right?" Cat Noir asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Chloe asked, rolling her eyes at Ladybug's partner. She turned to the heroine again. "Can you believe him? I'm NICE to him. See? He was actually a girl first, but I say him! I'm SUPER accepting. And he draws me as a villain for him and Marinette Dupain-Cheng to beat up!"

Ladybug groaned and palmed her forehead again.

Cat Noir sidestepped her and put his hand on Chloe's shoulder. She brushed him off with a pointed frown.

"Sorry," the super hero stammered, stepping back with an apologetic grin, his hand on the back of his neck. "No touch. Got it. Anyway... err…"

"Okay, first," Ladybug cut in, one finger up. "If you make a big deal out of how accepting you are, it's kind of obvious that you're actually not, because you're making it sound like it's an effort you're making, like you should get a medal or something. It's like bragging that you're modest."

"Why should I have to be modest?" Chloe asked with a sneer.

"Think of it this way," Cat Noir piped in. "How would you feel if someone pointed out to you that they always act like you're important?"

Chloe immediately flustered. "What kind of comparison is that?" She pointed at herself. "I'm the Mayor's daughter! I AM important! Nat is…"

"Nat's a boy just like you're important," Ladybug cut her off. The words left a bitter taste in her mouth but she soldiered on. Everyone was important, that's all she was saying. She wasn't calling Chloe a VIP, even if that was precisely what the blond believed. "If you say you ACT like he's a boy," she continued, "it sounds the exact same way as someone saying they ACT like you're important."

Chloe paused for a moment, then rolled her eyes. "FINE," she said. "Okay, that was poorly worded."

Ladybug kept her face as neutral as she could: that was as close to an admission of being wrong they were going to get out of the Mayor's junior politician of a daughter. She didn't reply, expecting Chloe to start talking again, and was not disappointed.

"That's no reason for all of them to gang up against me!" Chloe said, lifting her nose. "They basically called me a monster!" She let out an exaggerated sob and threw herself in Ladybug's arms again, sniffling.

Ladybug felt her eye twitch but, as agreed with Cat Noir on the way here, did her best to remain friendly and merely slipped away from Chloe rather than push her away.

"Chloe, we're here because they told us you were upset," Cat Noir said. His arm lifted slightly as he walked towards the blond girl, but he put it back down again.

Chloe scoffed, crossing her arms. "So you were only worried I'd get akumatized and cause trouble."

"We'd have left by now if that was the case," Ladybug pointed out.

It was true: checking that Chloe had not fallen for Hawkmoth's promises again had been one of the reasons for coming here, and arguably the most pressing one, but Cat Noir had insisted on a secondary objective. By staying here, Marinette was fighting against her own desires to leave Chloe's company, but if Cat Noir was right, it could be more than worth it.

Cat Noir was nodding at her statement. "We also wanted to talk to you, because you wouldn't be upset at everyone saying those things if you didn't care at all."

Ladybug was not as convinced of that as Cat Noir was but she couldn't exactly correct him without revealing she knew Chloe well, and even she had to admit there was a small chance he was right.

Chloe was glaring daggers at the floor. "I'm fine. So some people in my class don't like me. Who cares? I don't."

Ladybug swallowed back a loud grunt and almost managed not to roll her eyes. Chloe had just switched from dramatically heart broken and begging for sympathy to uncaring and blasée, and was obviously under the impression her audience would just buy it.

Cat Noir leaned on the wall, arms crossed and head tilted as though he were puzzled. "Weren't you saying they ALL ganged up on you?"

Chloe turned her glare on him. "So? I. Don't. CARE!"

"You know I don't like lies, Chloe," Ladybug said. She was just about out of patience. If Chloe was going to be like this, there was no point in their staying here.

"I'M NOT…"

"Okay, fine, you don't care and you're not lying," Cat Noir interrupted, standing up straight from his leaning position and crossing his arms. He was obviously just about done with the Mayor's daughter as well. "Just be quiet and listen, ok? There's something I want to say to you, and then we'll be out of your hair. Okay?"

Chloe huffed. "If it means an end to this conversation, fine."

"You spent most of your life so far completely confident that everyone loved you. You're pretty, you can be funny, you can be generous and YOU certainly feel like you're loveable."

He raised his hand in a surprisingly authoritative stop gesture: Chloe had opened her mouth. She shut it back and contented herself with narrowing her eyes at him.

"And today," Cat Noir continued, "you found out that most of your classmates don't actually like you much. They think you're mean. They blame you for their getting akumatized. And you're trying not to care, you're trying to just dismiss it as their being stupid for not loving someone as perfect as you, but you can't because you know that a lot of what they're saying is true. You DID cause several of them to be akumatized. You can say it wasn't your fault, you can say they overreacted, but you're not stupid: you know you had a part. And that means they have actual reasons to dislike you. It means they're NOT just being stupid and they're NOT going to wake up tomorrow feeling silly for it all and adoring you again."

Chloe was clearly not appreciating the amateur psychoanalysis. She had turned her back to the both of them, arms crossed again and staring out of the window as though the same view she'd had for years was suddenly completely engrossing.

Cat Noir continued undeterred. Ladybug had to admire his dedication: he was really doing his absolute best to help a girl who was after all a stranger to him become a better person.

"You keep hurting people, Chloe. If that's not what you're trying to do, you need to start being more careful. And if it IS what you want, get used to people not liking you." He sighed and uncrossed his arms, holding out his hands palms forward in a surrendering gesture. "Okay, I'm done," he said, shaking his head slightly. "We can go, my Lady."

Marinette nodded, looking at Chloe. The blond had not moved, still standing straight as a board, arms crossed and looking out the window. Ladybug threw her yoyo out of the same opened window Cat Noir and herself had gotten in through and when it caught on something outside, she swung away.

* * *

Cat Noir followed his lady into the night. She kept going for a short while, using her yoyo to swing from building to building. When she stopped, stowing her yoyo away after landing on a convenient flat roof, he landed next to her.

"Do you think I got through?" he asked. It was technically a bit of a risk to show he cared for the bratty blond, but he couldn't bring himself to worry too much about that risk. Despite Ladybug's and Plagg's warnings, he just didn't see the point in keeping their identities secret from each other. He only did it out of respect for his partner's wishes.

She smirked briefly, and he could tell she was thinking of teasing him, but her face grew serious again. "I don't know," she admitted. "Time will tell. You did your best."

He nodded and sighed. "Thanks for going along with this. I know it's a long shot."

"A long shot? Hoping Chloe Bourgeois, after being told nobody likes her, would be more receptive to criticism of her general behaviour and would turn a corner and start becoming a good person?"

"…yeah."

"I think "long shot" might be a little bit of an understatement there, kitty."

Chat Noir shrugged. He knew that even better than Ladybug herself. "I think it was worth a try."

Ladybug shrugged back. "Oh, definitely. Just think," she added with a wink, "if it works, we're probably going to see a 50% drop in akuma attacks."

He chuckled in spite of himself. Chloe had been his first friend and he wanted to think she was redeemable. She hadn't always been this bad, had she? But then, how would he have known either way? He had only ever seen how she was around him until he had started going to her school. He had already known she was no saint, but he'd still been unpleasantly surprised that day. And things had not exactly improved since.

Ladybug excused herself and he bid her goodbye with as much of his usual good humour as he could fake.

He sighed and started back home himself, resisting the urge to go check on Chloe again, either as Cat Noir or Adrien. It was no good torturing himself: his lady had been right. Time would tell, and he had done his best.

The rest was up to Chloe.

 **End**

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

Thanks for reading! Please comment/review/let me know what you think.

So, the headcanons…

First: Nat is transgender. I want it to be true for representation, but I honestly think it is possible because of a few in-show details. His body shape, particularly visible when he's the Evillustrator, is kind of hourglass like in that his chest his wider than his waist. The only other male student with that kind of shape is Kim and in his case, it's because he's very athletic and muscled. I think we can safely assume that's not the case with Nat. To me, he looks like he's got a female body shape and compresses. He is also one of only two boys wearing an open layer. I think that Adrien has one because his design needs to look more stylish than average, and that Nat has one because it is a fairly well known trick to camouflage your chest for trans boys and men. Finally, he reacts very strongly to the idea of people looking in his bag, much like Marinette. I theorize body dysphoria causes him to be uncomfortable with the thought of anyone seeing feminine hygiene products. That one is admittedly a stretch – he could just not like the idea of all of his drawings being looked at, but hey, it just solidifies it for me.

So, you heard it here first, people, and I hope some of you will like the idea enough to spread it because representation matters: NAT IS TRANSGENDER.

Second, the subtle one. I said I might tell you but I think I won't… or at least not outright. Just a hint then… it's about Alya and how she behaves. And it's a major plot point in my next story.


End file.
